SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 11, 1998-At Oracle OpenWorld(r) today, Oracle
Corporation announced sweeping support for the eXtensible Markup Language
(XML), the cross-platform data language now being defined by the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C), and the clear emerging standard for defining,
representing, and dynamically sharing information across the Internet.
Integrating XML into Oracle's Internet platform will make it dramatically
easier for companies to exchange and integrate information stored in databases
and then repurpose the information for building Internet applications.

"XML has quickly emerged as a key enabling technology for improving
communications between Internet, data warehousing, and e-commerce
applications," said Mark Jarvis, senior vice president of marketing at Oracle
Corp. "Oracle is committed to delivering comprehensive and coordinated XML
support across all its divisions and product lines. This support will allow
present and future Oracle customers to fully exploit the power, flexibility,
and interoperability of Internet-standard computing."

Electronic commerce: XML will play a major role in the exploding market for
business-to-business electronic commerce. XML allows organizations to quickly
and easily define cross-platform data formats for Internet-based electronic
data interchange, opening vast opportunities for entire industries to
inexpensively transact business over the Internet. Oracle will provide
complete and unparalleled support for defining, processing, and managing XML
e-commerce data formats and transactions.

Messaging and applications integration: One of XML's strengths is its
ability to seamlessly integrate systems and applications. Oracle's
comprehensive XML support will take full advantage of this inherent XML
capability and enable corporations to fully leverage XML to smoothly integrate
business processes. Oracle will provide application integration by applying
XML to its enterprise messaging infrastructure, providing a robust, scaleable,
open platform for transparently integrating front- and back-office systems.

Data warehousing: XML's natural interoperability will significantly impact
enterprise data warehousing efforts in the future, by enabling automated
exchange and transformation of enterprise metadata between competing vendors'
databases, repositories, and business intelligence applications. Oracle's XML
support will provide a complete and open platform for integrating enterprise
data warehousing and analysis architectures with corporate applications.

Application development: Oracle's world-class family of development tools
will provide managed, team-oriented support for robust XML development,
debugging, testing, and maintenance. IT teams will be able to exploit
Oracle8i's and Oracle Application Server's powerful XML capabilities to ease
development of personalized, flexible, and extensible Web applications through
Oracle's world-class family of development tools. Oracle tools will make it
easy to build database-driven Internet applications that exploit XML on the
Oracle Internet Computing platform.

Oracle's comprehensive XML support, which will extend from Oracle8i to
Oracle Application Server 4.0 to Oracle Tools, is based on industry standards
that enjoy broad support throughout the computer industry, and firmly
establishes Oracle's Internet platform as the platform of choice for IT
executives, programmers, and third-party software providers pursuing XML's
rich content and interoperability benefits.

XML support in Oracle8i is comprised of three key components: The
Oracle XML Parser provides programmatic processing of XML documents or
document fragments. Oracle iFS (Internet File System), the new
next-generation file system included with Oracle8i that gives users "write
once, read anywhere" content in a heterogeneous enterprise, will include XML
support to automate parsing and rendering of data between XML and the
database. In addition, XML-enabled "section searching" in Oracle interMedia
will provide more precise searches over structured documents.

Oracle: Committed to Open Industry Standards

Today Oracle also announced several XML related initiatives underway
within the company. Oracle is actively participating in the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) process with other corporations committed to furthering open
standards, including IBM, Netscape, and Platinum Technologies. Together under
the W3C banner, Oracle and other consortium members will help drive and shape
XML standards such as XML-Data, XSL, XQL, and XLink.

Oracle is also a cosubmitter to the Object Management Group (along
with IBM, Unisys, Platinum Technologies and others) for the Structured
Metadata Interchange Format (SMIF), an XML-based proposed technology for
transporting data between repositories.

Support for XML will be included with Oracle8i, which is expected to
be available at the end of this year. Oracle Application Server 4.0 is
expected to support XML in the first half of 1999. Oracle JDeveloper(tm) is
expected to add support for XML in the first quarter of 1999. Oracle WebDB
and Oracle Developer are expected to add support for XML in the second half of
1999. For more information about Oracle's XML strategy, go to (URL)
http://www.oracle.com/xml/.

Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for
information management, and the world's second largest independent software
company. With annual revenues of more than $7.5 billion, the company offers
its database, application server, tools, and application products, along with
related consulting, education, and support services in more than 140 countries
around the world.

For more information about Oracle, please call 650/506-7000. Oracle's
World Wide Web address is (URL) http://www.oracle.com.

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